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What altitude do you guys usually set for RTH? i live in a pretty urban area and even the fields i fly in have power lines all over the place so i was thinking the standard 30m RTH height wouldnt suffice. is there a maximum height it can use for RTH altitude?

What altitude do you guys usually set for RTH? i live in a pretty urban area and even the fields i fly in have power lines all over the place so i was thinking the standard 30m RTH height wouldnt suffice. is there a maximum height it can use for RTH altitude?

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Whatever the "right" altitude is.

It's gonna be different in the Everglades than it will be in NYC.

You need to know the height of your buildings, trees, whatever and you need to leave space for error.

I regularly fly up the sides of mountains so I can tell you that the return to home altitude is limited to the max Phantom altitude setting which can be set up to 500m. Be sure to set your rth altitude every time you fly as sometimes with updates it resets and I wouldn't want to fly out in the valley with my rth altitude set at 500m so it is important to check it every time you fly.

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Considering that the current altitude is just an estimate, I always set my RTH altitude to at least 50 feet higher than the tallest known obstacle. If you have obstacle avoidance enabled, your Phantom should auto climb and fly over any obstacles it encounters while flying home if the RTH altitude is too low. However, obstacle avoidance is not perfect, so it would be best to set an appropriate RTH altitude so you don't have to rely on that failsafe feature.

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I know this is obvious to many people, but it's worth mentioning here since a few people are sharing their go-to settings. So, here goes

The RTH altitude is not a setting you should just willy nilly copy because you saw someone else using the same number in this forum. You really need to scope out each flying area before you fly and set a value that is appropriate based on the tallest known obstacle in the flying area.

Can anyone please explain how this RTH altitude setting works?
Let's say, that the P4 is flying at 30m currently, and the RTH alt is set to 60m. Whenever I initiate RTH, it will immediately fly up to 60m (without any horizontal movement) and then start flying back to the home location. Or, from 30m alt it is starting to come back home and while it is on the way it flies up to 60m (so horizontal AND vertical movement happens at the same time)?
Sorry for the dummy question, but I would like to understand the logic...

What confuses me is that even when "Imperial" is set, the RTH setting still indicates "m" for meters. I don't know if that is a small oversight where it changes to feet since imperial was chosen or it remains in meters. Because of that, I set mine at "120" assuming it is in meters as to not go above 400'. Anyone from DJI, it would be neato if that was fixed.

Considering that the current altitude is just an estimate, I always set my RTH altitude to at least 50 feet higher than the tallest known obstacle. If you have obstacle avoidance enabled, your Phantom should auto climb and fly over any obstacles it encounters while flying home if the RTH altitude is too low. However, obstacle avoidance is not perfect, so it would be best to set an appropriate RTH altitude so you don't have to rely on that failsafe feature.

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You know what would be a great feature is an app or embedded in the Go App, a map of height. I'm sure one exists or at the very least, companies like Drone Deploy are doing with the help of people like you and I to create one.

They are trying to get a Google Maps style 3D version of the Earth.

It would be a definite benefit to know that the tallest obstacle within a 1 mile range is 70 meters or something.

This is a good example what happen when you set lower RTH altitude, Also Im surprised that the P4 obstacle avoidance does not work well on 2nd object as it does for the first object

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That's interesting - it looks like it didn't raise much higher than the first obstacle.

Also his horizon is not level!!! And he said he calibrated and did all the imu stuff as well.

I set mine to 50 or 60 meters regardless because trees are not that high generally. Everyone is right it really depends on your area.

But be mindful that what goes up must come down, which means if you do a return to home on low battery and it raises so many meters, it needs power to come back down, 100 meters is really high for low battery. So determine how high objects are and set it appropriately or around 50-60 meters

This is a good example what happen when you set lower RTH altitude, Also Im surprised that the P4 obstacle avoidance does not work well on 2nd object as it does for the first object

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Great vid! Glad it all worked out and just go to Pastor Nate's sermon and you will be square.

Good reminder to always check that we set the RTH. With all the settings and pre-check things you can do, being OCD, as I sort of am is useful.

Amazing that your P4 didn't take a hint of damage. I've seen people that had a 2 foot fall that almost totaled it.

Great stuff man. Way to record your methodology for recovering as well.

The thing you didn't do, even though you said you were, was panic. This is the worst thing one can do in a "crisis" situation. You won't do the right thing if you panic. When someone encounters a situation like this, my method is to just immediately admit defeat, and sort of put it in my head that's it's gone, and then just calmly do the things that are necessary. That "no signal" is scary right?

Mine keeps on doing that even when in the air and I can't figure out why on one of my Phantoms. Hopefully the mod hack will do it.

Anyway, nice!

EDIT: I forgot to say, I would set the obstacle avoidance to "stop" or hover. That way, you can look and see what the situation is. It saved you from the first tree but not the second but if you were to have seen the bird hovering near the tree instead of trying to traverse a second, you might have "saved" it, even though your P4 hitting a tree doesn't do any damage. I'm going to church!